TV programs worth watching
Sun November 21 — Sat November 27

The treatment of history as high drama, which the British do 
very well, has its drawbacks. One is that the history becomes 
subject to the needs of the drama.

Gunpowder, Treason And Plot (ABC 8.30pm Sunday) is a case 
in point. Very well acted by an excellent cast, it is by its 
nature unable to admit of more than one interpretation of events 
or to allow for uncertainties in the historical record.

So the Gunpowder Plot of the unfortunate Guy Fawkes is presented 
as a genuine plot that James I and his government uncovered and 
dealt with to their advantage. The very real possibility that it 
was in fact engineered by James and his ministers, through an 
agent provocateur, expressly to give him the excuse to crush the 
Catholic opposition and become the de facto protector of 
Parliament, cannot be accommodated in this dramatised version.

The Protestant churches arose as the religion of the then new 
social system of capitalism. No longer would a rich man's chances 
of getting into Heaven be likened to a camel's chances of getting 
through the eye of a needle!

Today, the most rabid capitalists, the like of George W Bush and 
the Republican Right, are followers of Pentecostal churches whose 
key teachings are that Christians are destined to be joyful, 
successful and prosperous. Especially prosperous.

Guy Sebastian's Church, screening on Compass (ABC 
10.15pm Sunday), uses last year's Australian Idol winner, Guy 
Sebastian, to publicise the Paradise Community Church, a huge so-
called "contemporary" church that sits in the foothills on the 
outskirts of Adelaide.

Sebastian and his family have been active members of this church 
throughout the past decade and now he's the poster boy for one of 
its largest ministries, "Solid Rock Youth". Specifically designed 
to draw in teenagers, the youth ministries draw hundreds of new 
worshippers every year — overwhelmingly young people — with a 
blend of music, modern marketing and the promise of prosperity, 
all wrapped around a conservative Bible-based moral message.

Geraldine Cox is a feisty Australian woman who is mother to a 
family of orphans in the constantly volatile political landscape 
of Cambodia.

Director Janine Hosking filmed Geraldine Cox over a period of 
three years to make My Khmer Heart (ABC 8.30pm Monday), an 
intimate and personal portrait of a gutsy lady.

The film won the Best Documentary Award at the Hollywood Film 
Festival.

This week's episode of Dynasties (ABC 8.00pm Tuesdays) is 
devoted to The Ashton Family, who have been synonymous with 
circus in Australia for over 150 years.

Ashton's Circus is Australia's longest-running performing arts 
organisation. But today they've been brought to their knees by 
competition from the giant multi-national hi-tech circuses, as 
well as the modern issue of animal rights.

Perhaps it's time to raise the question (which this program 
doesn't) of whether Australian circuses should continue to be 
private, family companies or should they be publicly-supported 
community or state cultural enterprises?

What The Child Sex Trade (SBS 8.30pm Tuesday) makes 
abundantly clear — if it needed to made clear — is that child 
prostitution and sex trafficking is a product of poverty, gross 
income inequality and hopelessness.

Kids facing a life of unemployment and poverty on the streets of 
Bucharest (as in this documentary) who are offered what seem like 
large sums of money to have sex with Western paedophiles are much 
more likely to say yes.

The unfortunate children shown here live in the underground and 
survive by begging during the day and selling sex at night. The 
triumph of the counter-revolution did not bring them any more 
benefits than it brought the Romanian workers.

Filmmaker Liviu Tipurita is however primarily concerned with 
exposing the vicious trade in young boys and girls among German, 
British and US paedophiles.

Earl Silas Tupper invented the watertight, airtight Tupper seal 
in the 1940s, but his polyethylene Wonderbowls (as they were then 
called) languished on store shelves.

The secret to Tupperware's success was Brownie Wise and her story 
is told in Tupperware (ABC 9.00pm Wednesday).

Divorced from a drunken husband, Brownie, a former union 
organiser and now a single parent, earned extra income by selling 
Stanley Home Products — cleaning aids and brushes — at home 
party demonstrations.

Stanley was a pioneer in direct selling, and the job was a 
perfect fit for Wise's drive, ambition and charm. She had quickly 
become one of the top Stanley sellers.

In the late 1940s, Wise and several other Stanley branch managers 
around the country figured Tupperware should be sold at home 
parties, because users needed to learn how to "burp" the airtight 
Tupper seal correctly.

In 1950 Wise, her son Jerry, and mother Rosie all moved to 
Florida. Wise started a company she called Tupperware Patio 
Parties, and was selling far more Tupperware than the stores.

Her success caught the eye of Earl Tupper, who had unsuccessfully 
started a home party division at Tupperware. He saw his 
opportunity to make home parties work, and asked Wise to be vice 
president of his company.

Earl Tupper took Tupperware out of the hardware stores and 
department stores, and from that time, Tupperware was sold 
exclusively on the home party plan.

Wise took what she had learned in Stanley and improved on it 
tenfold. She had an intuitive grasp of selling, of consumer 
culture, and the fantasies shared by many Americans in the 1950s.

She recognised women who got very little recognition elsewhere in 
their lives, bestowing upon them trophies, luxury goods and 
applause. With Tupper's blessing, the company's public relations 
staff promoted Wise extensively (she was the first woman to make 
the cover of Business Week).

Over time, however, Wise became increasingly high-handed, and she 
was less patient with Tupper's micro-management and unpredictable 
temper. In 1958 Earl Tupper unceremoniously and abruptly fired 
her, booting her from the multi-million dollar company she had 
helped build; she held no company stock and was given just one 
year's salary.

The peculiarly capitalist American Dream had claimed another 
victim.

The odd-ball success of the pedestrian yet likeable Austrian cop-
show Inspector Rex, about a police dog who is smarter than the 
humans around him, has spawned the inevitable imitator.

To make room for the new dog on the block (and use up the 
Inspector Rex episodes with an M rating), SBS has moved 
Inspector Rex to Friday nights at 8.30 pm. Rex's Thursday night 
slot will be taken over by Turbo (SBS 7.30pm Thursdays).

Turbo is a handsome border collie who works for the Italian 
police, and likes to ride on motor scooters. Isn't television 
amazing?